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Warrior and the Nurse |
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A combat infantry warrior
From the cruel war come to die
Ravaged in body and spirit
Bit the bloody bullet with his name on it
Lying on his deathbed rough like the eagle tough
With a nations blood on his wearied hands
Filling his wounded and repressive heart
Bloodied spent from alien lands
Wounded by wars inconsolable hate
The boy's innocence beat out of him
Just a boy in violence grown irate
Thrust into the armor of a man
In far and away Japan waited an angel of mercy
Gently calling To sons of freedom born,
Far and away across the China Sea
Come ye men by the cruel war shorn
Come from Vietnam's blistering conflagration
Come to Japans alien shore
I will treat boys rent by war's devastation
Come ye tired and sorely wounded
By hatreds slings and arrows oppressed
Gather under my angelic wings unfolded.
Here I'll soothe body and soul by battle repressed.
Embrace again sweet life
Feel my tender touch beleaguered soul restoring
Far from war's maddening strife
Summon inner strength from the depths in healing
Honor a brother depraved by beastly war's dearth
Oh angel with the loving touch
Reestablish in my soul humanities worth
Oh, a perfumed, porcelained hand means so much
Honor a sacred tradition of comfort giving
Pull a neighbor from death's door
Bring back love and joy of living
Giving with sunny hope from compassion pour
Remind me of my humanity
Mend my wounded heart so much in need
Restore misplaced values sanity
Of thoughts left back in the field where they bleed
Mercy comes from beings in divine sympathy
Sisters deeply aware of a spirit inside suffering
For wounded by the cruel war too, sharing empathy
To father, brother, son, nurtured loving imbue
In sensitivity the pain relieving
A lady officer, and an embattled grunt private
Knowing days together were grimly numbered
Living in a moment snatched from immoral war
By the sands of time encumbered
In but a fleeting island of time before
Before he must go his way
And she return to tend teeming thousands more
Depart from budding love games in innocence play
Tend boys receipts from this bloody war
For he was not a king,
Just a warrior � just a soldier � just a man
She was not a dream
She was an angel � disguised as woman
They ever briefly love
They played the game
Danced the dance of purest love
Though they were not the same
From carnage to heaven's brightest star
Is a journey exceeding far
For the boy ripped from war's raging mist
Back to "the world" borne on whitened wings caring
Far too for the master nurse therapist
Though tender mercy bearing
In passion compassion...
A slice of home far from home sharing
Burnt by the pull of worlds tearing apart
A brief love with no beginning and no end
Fallen silent through ages the beating heart
The ways of the world cannot in the end bend. |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2001
Listed
December 1, 2010 |
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About
Author...
In 1966-67, Gary Jacobson served with B Co
2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam as a combat infantryman and is the recipient of the Purple
Heart.
Gary, who resides in Idaho writes stories he
hopes are never forgotten, perhaps compelled by
a Vietnamese legend that says, "All poets are
full of silver threads that rise inside them as
the moon grows large." So Gary says he
writes because "It is that these silver
threads are words poking at me � I must let them
out. I must! I write for my brothers who cannot
bear to talk of what they've seen and to educate
those who haven't the foggiest idea about the
effect that the horrors of war have on
boys-next-door."
Visit Gary Jacobson's site for more information
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